October 15 Daily Devotional

Bible Verse

"Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God" (Rev. 3:2).

Devotional

The start of spiritual erosion does not involve any change in the essential character of divine grace. Rather, it is a secret decay of the health, vigor, and exercise of that grace in the soul.

In the physical realm, the heart loses nothing of its natural function when, through disease, it sends but a weak pulsation through the system. So also in the spiritual constitution of the believer, divine grace may retain its character and its properties, and yet be sickly, feeble, and inoperative. The pulse may still beat, but beat faintly. The seed may live and abide forever (1 Pet. 1:23), but not be fruitful. The new nature can never assimilate or coalesce with any other, and must always retain its divinity untainted and unchanged, but it may become lethargic.

Without changing its nature, divine grace may decline to an alarming extent in its power and exercise. It may be sickly, drooping, and ready to die. It may become so enfeebled through its decay as to present an ineffectual resistance to the inroads of strong corruption. It may get so low that the enemy may ride roughshod over it at will. It may become so inoperative and yielding, that sloth, worldliness, pride, carnality, and their kindred vices, may obtain an easy and unresisted conquest.

This decay of grace may also be advancing without any marked decline in the spiritual perception of the intellect as to the beauty and fitness of spiritual truth. The symptom that betrays the true condition of the soul will be the loss, not of a spiritual perception, but of spiritual enjoyment of the loveliness and harmony of the truth. The judgment will lose none of its light, but the heart will lose much of its fervor. The truths of revelation—especially the doctrines of grace—will occupy the same prominent position as to their value and beauty. And yet the influence of these truths may be scarcely felt. The Word of God will be assented to but the believer may be an almost utter stranger to it as the instrument of sanctification, of abasement, of nourishment. Yes, he must necessarily be so, while this process of secret erosion is going forward in his soul.

This incipient state of spiritual decay may not involve any lowering of the standard of holiness, and yet there will be no ascending of the heart or reaching forth of the mind towards a practical conformity to that standard. The intellect will acknowledge God's law, as embodied in the life of Christ, to be the rule of the believer's walk. And yet vital godliness may have declined to so low and feeble a state in the soul that there is no panting after conformity to Christ, no breathing after holiness, no resistance to the point of blood in striving against sin (Heb. 12:2).

Oh, it is an alarming condition for a Christian when the heart contradicts the intellect and the life belies the profession!—when there is more knowledge of the truth than experience of its power, more light in the understanding than grace in the affections, more pretension in the profession than holiness and spirituality in the walk!

And yet it is possible for a professing Christian to be reduced to this sad and melancholy state. How this should lead the man of empty notions, of mere creed, of lofty pretension, of cold and lifeless orthodoxy, to pause, search his heart, examine his conscience, and seek the Lord afresh!

Come, O Creator Spirit blest,
and in our hearts take up thy rest;
Spirit of grace, with heav'nly aid
come to the souls whom thou hast made.

(Anon., Latin, 10th century; tr. cento)

Be sure to read the Preface by Octavius Winslow and A Note from the Editor by Larry E. Wilson.

Larry Wilson is an ordained minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. In addition to having served as the General Secretary of the Committee on Christian Education of the OPC (2000–2004) and having written a number of articles and booklets (such as God's Words for Worship and Why Does the OPC Baptize Infants) for New Horizons and elsewhere, he has pastored OPC churches in Minnesota, Indiana, and Ohio. We are grateful to him for his editing of Morning Thoughts, the OPC Daily Devotional for 2011.